House Payments

[AriesMouse]

The more negligible it is, the less it would affect house flippers. The less negligible it is, the more it would affect innocent players just trying to enjoy housing.

A valid point, and one that would require fine tuning.
Honestly, this sort of system might not effect flippers too much, bit it would still help to weed out the people that hoard houses as trophies, rather than actually doing anything with them. People that do not actively use their house, or even log on enough to avoid getting an email telling them to log in an check their house, would be the ones mostly punished by this system. And it would make many people think twice about trying to maintain a house for an alt.

[Alien_Gamer]

I feel like you didn't read through my whole post, if you completely missed the point I made that not only should there methods to pay through any type of game play (so using things like Poetics, or Wolf Marks), there was also a section specifically highlighting how this could make it easier for someone to keep a house, if they are going through a hard time/facing something similar to the hurricane issue not long ago.

Also bear in mind, the monthly cost wouldn't even be something high. It should be a number that is negligible for anyone that is an active player.

Again, so long as housing is a finite resource, things should be done to discourage people from owning homes that are not doing anything with them, aside from trying to flip them, or logging in once a month just to run inside so it doesn't auto-demo.

There are several issues with this kind of thinking though.

First, there is a huge income disparity in this game because there are so many ways to play. Unless the fee is set to something like 10M a month, I can afford it easily and I know about a dozen crafters on my world that wouldn't notice if the fee was 50M a month. I also know many people who struggle to make 100K a month. I know some people that just log in to socialize or RP with friends and don't really care about making any kind of currency; but one of them struggled for years to save up to buy a small house and they use the house almost daily; they don't craft, they don't raid, they don't pvp, they only garden to grow pretty flowers to give away, they just enjoy their time with friends. Should this person be forced to lose their house so you can buy it? I also know a lot of raiders that make a fair amount of money but recycle all of it back into their gear, should they have to lose their house because they prefer being better raiders over something else? Should they have to choose between upgrading their gear with the token or saving their house?

Where in that spectrum of 100M to 0 would you set the fee? Unless the fee is set high enough to discourage flippers, which is your stated point, why bother with it? How many other players are you willing to alienate just for those few flippers? And when the fee is set high enough to discourage flippers, how can a normal person then afford said house?

Second, this does NOT make it easier to keep a house. By definition, adding a fee means adding something the owner has to do to maintain the house. Adding an upkeep does not make it easier, it makes it harder.

Third, auto demolition already exists. Until there is no more need for it SE wouldn't allow an in game shortcut around it because it then defeats the purpose of having it. Which means you could pay for one month at a time...so that doesn't help a house owner either. And if there's no need for an auto demolition timer then there's no need for an upkeep fee either.

Fourth, can you show me where in the TOS it says someone must do something with their house once they buy it? Or can you show me where it says other players get to dictate what you can or can't do with a house? Once a person owns a house it is theirs to do with as they please, including not decorate it. You don't get a say in it.

Your entire arguement is based on making things harder for home owners to get them to give up their plots so you can have a chance at buying one and it does nothing to stop flippers. In short, there is no upside to an upkeep fee and a whole lot of bad. I appreciate you want to contribute to the solution but upkeep fees are not a solution. The only meaningful solution is more supply.

[Chevronone]

Everyone who would support this would then immediately not support this the second they got a house. Next.

[AriesMouse]

There are several issues with this kind of thinking though...

1: The cost would be very low, and again, something that could be covered through literally anything marked under the currency tab, so literally if all someone wants to do is RP and Golden Saucer, they could easily manage to keep their house. As stated several times, it should be realistically, a negligible amount, something that shouldn't take more than two hours of play time to get the currency of your choice for (give or take depending on the currency).I said flippers were one concern, but honestly, this is mostly towards people that own houses, but do not at all use them. The people that need to be emailed and reminded to even step foot in their house at all just to keep it. If they actually have to put in some, even small, amount of effort to keep that house, would they still even have it? Or would the cost to keep it eventually become too much, since chances are, if you're getting auto-demo warnings, you're not likely playing all that much to begin with. Also keep in mind, for those having a hard time getting the gil to cover it, friends could easily help with the payment/that is why a donation box could be put in, for the people that are feeling exceptionally generous with their gil/other unused currencies.

2: It makes it easier to keep in terms of long term planning. If you save up and pay upkeep ahead of time, it pays off. A friend could give you a boost as a holiday gift or something too. It making it hard to keep a house over all, is part of the appeal, as again, it makes it so people more or less just keeping houses as unused trophies might not want to hold onto their house as badly once it starts to become a hassle to fund every month, especially if they are an inactive player.

3: Auto-Demo exists, but it's not that great of a system, since once someone gets the email warning, they just log in, run inside the house, and the timer starts over. If anything, they shouldn't even get an email about it. Maybe an in game letter, on the character that owns the house, that is it.

4: You are very right here, but honestly, so long as housing is such a finite resource, it should be one that takes some effort to keep, even if the effort is just 1 hour of time a month to get some sort of currency of your choice to pay the upkeep. idealistically, I don't think that is too much to ask. Can you honestly say that it is perfectly cool for someone to just sit on a house as a status symbol/trophy, literally just having it so say "F-you, got mine"? So many people complain about people owning more than one house across their characters, but never once bat an eye at the people that own houses and do literally nothing with them aside from say "I got a house and someone else didn't". It's just one of many, many problems that need addressed, if they are never going to address the real issue, which is that housing should not be a status symbol, and it shouldn't be such a finite resource.

[Mirch]

Everyone who would support this would then immediately not support this the second they got a house. Next.

You underestimate some players wallet.

[Cylla]

I do not support a monthly fee of any kind for housing.

I'm with this also.
Housing shouldn't ever, in any game, have a monthly fee (real money or in-game).

Can we stop these crazy ideas and just all agree that what SE needs to do is make enough housing for everyone to enjoy? Besides, by the way it sounds SE got a plan in motion already so let just stop and wait until closer to 4.2 when they start giving out the information. Then you all can scream and yell again because you don't like the idea they came up with.

[Lelila38]

And the best solution would be to shift to instanced housing so that the housing supply can meet the housing demand. Not implement arbitrary charges a la a mortgage in a veiled attempt to curve house-loggers or house-flippers. Because it wouldn’t stop either.

But as much as we'd like this, it won't happen. It would require for them to rework the whole housing system and admit they did it wrong in the first place. So all we're gonna get are more wards, which are gonna fill up within seconds yet again.

[Leloa]

I'm not sure what this would achieve? When people have bought the plot already why'd they need to pay gil monthly for it? And those are high prices a lot of people only have money to buy the house itself and then they don't even have money for furniture lol

[Dualgunner]

A valid point, and one that would require fine tuning.

I don't think any amount of fine tuning would result in a system that works better than the one we have now.

Honestly, this sort of system might not effect flippers too much, bit it would still help to weed out the people that hoard houses as trophies, rather than actually doing anything with them.

I know you don't just mean people who own multiple houses here. Sorry, there's no reason to have a house but as a trophy, so this reasoning is flawed.

People that do not actively use their house, or even log on enough to avoid getting an email telling them to log in an check their house, would be the ones mostly punished by this system.

Everyone is punished by this system. No matter how negligibly: you're proposing we go from a system where people pay once, then own the house so long as they log into it to a system where people have to pay multiple times over a period of time.

The only way I'd ever consider something like that to be okay is if, say, this only applied at the start of 4.2, and everybody who owned a house prior to that was grandfathered in. That way everybody who purchased a house from then on would purchase it with full knowledge that there would be more gil they'd need to pay to maintain the house.

To add, even the people who only log on when they get the email are paying a sub. Many would argue, including me, that the sub is the rent that one is paying. I don't think you have a very good argument that they're less entitled to a house due to their own inactivity: they are maintaining their commitment to the game in rent that's far more valuable than any ingame currency there is.

And it would make many people think twice about trying to maintain a house for an alt.

Or they could just make a house bound to an account, and give every alt access to the same house owned by the player.

[Rinuko]

And this is why we can't have nice things in the game.

You clearly didn't read the whole post, where it was stated that not only were those numbers just examples, but also that there should be a method to pay that isn't just gil. People should be able to easily afford the rent just by doing what they enjoy in the game, PvE, PvP, etc. Hell, even Gold Saucer could be an option.

I did read it and yes I made my post with those numbers in mind. But even having to grind seals or a currency whenever its GC, FC, Tokens or MGP it so stupid to even consider it.

Edit: Would like to add this also the Dev team stance on the matter from ARR. Doubt that has changed.

Q: Will there be any maintenance fees or other costs for housing, besides the cost of the land and house?

A: In older MMOs, such as Ultima Online, there was a house maintenance fee you had to pay weekly, but in FFXIV: ARR we decided against this system.